Willi Carlisle, who plays New World Brewery in Tampa, Florida on April 13, 2025. Credit: Photo by Rose Flowr Creative
Traveling with a tent big enough for everybody, Willi Carlisle returns to the Bay area after opening for Tyler Childers last summer. The 35-year-old—who shouts out Tampa in his 2022 song “Tulsa’s Last Magician”—arrives this time fresh off announcing a new album, Winged Victory, due June 27.

In a 2024 interview with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Carlisle said he was really missing tradfolk and nerd folk. “We’re definitely gonna get more weird before we get more normal, and I’m gonna get more loquacious. I’m gonna get more bug-eyed. I’m very excited,” he added.

Carlisle certainly sounds that way on a new single, “Work Is Work,” which is a banjo-heavy return to a sound that feels more like a Smithsonian Folkways record or lost Del McCoury song than his recent output.

While Carlisle has called the new stuff “A good folk music response to the troubles of the First World is saying ‘what are the little things that we can do,’” there’s probably also a bunch of the colorful storytelling that’s made him an underground favorite (other tracks on Winged Victory include “Big Butt Billy” and “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears”).

Sarasota’s Trailer Park Mark opens the show with a round of heartbroken outlaw country.

Tickets to see Willi Carlisle play the music hall at New World Brewery in Tampa on Sunday, April 13 are still available and start at $17.

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This article appears in Apr 3-9, 2025.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...